More BOOK Stuff.

Three more bits about THE BOOK. An Englishman in New York, Up Your Ego both mention it (thanks guys!) and Troubled Diva makes a few good points.

Yes, yes, the typeface (which, thankfully, I’m not responsible for), perhaps there are too many political posts and this does strike home:

1. Since the political blogosphere is overwhelmingly male, it therefore follows that there are almost no female bloggers represented. I can't really accept any good excuses for this, as it's not as if female bloggers are any minority in terms of sheer numbers. A large proportion of my blogroll is female. A couple of weeks ago, 75% of the nominees for my Post Of The Week were female; this week, the percentage is again over 50%. So let me tell you, my inner Equal Opportunities rep is going mental right now. 

(Why, I've had to physically restrain myself from typing "What a disgracefully white heterosexual able-bodied male selection... totally sickening... typical of the patriarchal power imbalance at the heart of yadda yadda yadda...")

I have to admit that I’m so disgracefully white heterosexual able-bodied male selection biased that I did specifically seek out a couple of posts dealing with "gay" issues and didn’t even notice the number of women included until Natalie Bennett pointed it out in her review. Can’t get much more patriarchal than that now, can I, not simply ignoring the issue, or deciding to specifically not have a gender balance, but not even noting the issue at all?

Sorry folks.

Of the top of my head there’s Natalie Bennett herself, Natalie Solent, Green Fairy (goes and looks at index) Chunky Monkey,  It Comes in Pints,  and err, that’s about it for the distaff side.

So fair comment there.

On the political thing, I very deliberately did include some not from the pro-liberation left. Dean Men Left, Bloggerheads, Blairwatch, Stoppers and so on.

One plea in mitigation though. I had 6 weeks between the first discussions about the book and delivery of the first draft. So while I did indeed leaf through 5,000 blogs there was always going to be a preponderance of those I already knew.

Which is where the Britblog Roundup comes in.....clearly the book had at least part of its genesis in this Sunday afternoon roundup where people nominate their favourite blog pieces of the previous week. You can do so by simply emailing the URL to britblog AT gmail DOT com. If there is a 2006 version some of the research will come from there, naturally. But it would also be wonderful if more people would nominate posts, most especially from those areas of blogging that don’t normally get a look in. Yes, personal blogs, LGBT, women writers, different political persuasions and all.  The entire aim and purpose of it is to do precisely this, to get us reading out of our little groupthink bubbles.

Wanna help? Send in a nomination!